Annie is well.1 Got your letter, postmarked 5th about two
hours ago—come d—d quick, (to be a little profane.)2 Ward and I have held a long consultation, Sunday morning, and
the result was that us two have determined to start to Brazil, if possible, in
six weeks from now, in order to look carefully into
matters there (by the way, I forgot to mention that Annie
is well,) and report to Dr. Martin in time for him
to follow on the first of March.3 We propose going via. New York. Now, between you
and I and the fence you must say nothing about this to Orion, for he thinks that
Ward is to go clear through alone, and that I am to stop at New York or New
Orleans until he reports. But that don’t suit me. My confidence in
human nature does not extend quite that far. I won’t depend upon
Ward’s judgment, or anybody’s [else.—]I want to see with my own eyes, and form my own opinion. But you know what
Orion is. When he gets a notion into his head, and more especially if it is an
erroneous one, the Devil can’t get it out again. So I [nev knew ]better than to combat his arguments long, but apparently yielded, inwardly
determined to go clear through. Ma knows my determination, but even she counsels me to keep it from [Orion. She
]says I can treat him as I did her when I started to St. Louis and went to
New York—I can start to New York and go to South America.! (This
reminds me that—Annie is well.) Although Orion
talks grandly about furnishing me with [a h fifty ]or a hundred dollars in six weeks, I am not such an ass as to think he
will retain the same opinion such an eternity of time—in all
probability he will be entirely out of the notion by that
[time. Though ]I don’t like to attribute selfish motives to him, you could see
yourself that his object in favoring my [wishesing] was that I might take all the hell of pioneering in a foreign land, and
then when everything was placed on a firm basis, and beyond all risk, he could
follow himself. But you would soon discover, when the time arrived, that he
couldn’t leave Mollie and that [lu “love ] of a baby.”4 With these facts before my eyes, (I must not forget to say that Annie
iswell,) I could not depend upon Orion for ten dollars, so
I have “feelers” out in several directions, and have
already asked for a hundred dollars from one source (keep it to yourself.)5 I will lay on my oars for a while, and see how the wind sets, when I may
probably try to get more. Mrs. Creel is a great friend of mine, and has some
influence [over with ]Ma and Orion, though I reckon they would not acknowledge it.6 I am going up there to-morrow, to press her into my service. I shall
take care that Ma and Orion are plentifully supplied with South American books.
They have Herndon’s [Report. now.]7 Ward and the Dr. and myself will hold a
grand consultation [to-night. at ]the office. We have agreed that no more shall be admitted into our
company.

Emma Graham has got home, and Bettie Barrett has gone up the
country.8 I may as well remark that Annie is well. I spent
Sunday afternoon up there,9 and brought away a [bo big ]bouquet of Ete’s d—d stinking flowers, (I mean no
disrespect [for to ]her, or her taste,)[.] Any [sink single ]one of the lot smells worse than a Sebastopol
“stink-pot.”10 Between you and I, [be I] believe that the secret of Ma’s willingness to [w allow ]me to go to South America lies in the fact that she is afraid I am going
to get married! Success to the hallucination. Annie has not heard from the girls
yet. I believe the Guards went down to Quincy to-day to escort our first locomotive home.11

The report that Belle and Isbell are about to be married, is
still going.12 Dick was engaged in sticking up Whig office hand bills at last
accounts.13

1
Annie Taylor, apparently now in Keokuk for the summer, her college term
having ended in the first week of July (“Commencement
exercises . . .,” Keokuk Gate City, 7
July 56, 2). (Samuel C. Webster mistakenly identified
“Annie” as Annie Moffett in
MTBus, 28.)

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2
Henry was presumably in St. Louis, with his mother and sister.

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3
The proposed expedition reflected Clemens’s recent reading
(see note 7). Joseph S. Martin, a Keokuk physician, board-of-health
member, and “Lecturer on Chemistry and Toxicology”
at the Iowa Medical College in Keokuk, was evidently to be one of his
companions. The 1856–57 Keokuk directory has partial listings
for three persons named Ward, but it is impossible to say which was
Clemens’s prospective partner (OC 1856, 45, 103, and advertisements, 35; Harris, 214). Paine reported that
Martin and Ward “gave up the plan, probably for lack of
means” (MTL, 1:35); Clemens, however, apparently nursed his interest in Brazil
until 1857, when he became a cub pilot.

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4
Orion and Mollie’s daughter, Jennie, was born on 14 September
1855 (MEC, 6).

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5
The potential source mentioned here has not been identified. By the time
Clemens left Keokuk in mid-October 1856, however, he had made an
arrangement to write travel letters for the Keokuk Post. He was to be paid five dollars per letter, a rate he
subsequently negotiated up to seven and a half dollars (Lorch 1929, 434–38;
Rees, 399–400). In fact
he wrote only three letters, dated 18 October 1856 from St. Louis, and
14 November 1856 and 14 March 1857 from Cincinnati (SLC 1856, 1856, 1857). Written in the guise of a loutish bumpkin,
Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, the letters were among his first efforts to
sustain the vernacular voice that he perfected in his mature writings.
Not long after the last of them appeared, Clemens gave up the idea of a
Brazilian excursion in favor of becoming a pilot.

7Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, Made under
Direction of the Navy Department (1853–54), in two
volumes, by William Lewis Herndon and Lardner Gibbon. Clemens evidently
read only the first volume, by Herndon. In 1910, in “The
Turning Point of My Life,” he recalled that it
“told an astonishing tale about coca,
a vegetable product of miraculous powers; asserting that it was so
nourishing and so strength-giving that the native of the mountains of
the Madeira region would tramp up-hill and down all day on a pinch of
powdered coca and require no other sustenance.” As a result,
Clemens “was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also
with a longing to open up a trade in coca with all the world. During
months I dreamed that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para
and spring that splendid enterprise upon an unsuspecting
planet” (WIM, 459; see also AD, 29 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:289). This ambition must also have been fed by newspaper
reports of the Amazon Valley. Between 1853 and 1856 dozens of articles
published in the cities where Clemens lived extolled the wonders and
opportunities of the region and urged that it be opened to commerce.

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8
Emma Graham may be Emaline Graham, aged about sixteen, the daughter of
James B. Graham, a carpenter (Keokuk Census[1860], 145). Bettie Barrett has not been identified.

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9
Hawkins Taylor owned a tract of land in a fashionable area on the
Mississippi, a few miles above Keokuk. Clemens evidently had gone
“up there” to visit Annie Taylor. His remark that
he intended “going up there” to visit Mrs. Creel
suggests that the spot was a summer retreat for prominent Keokuk
families, including the Pattersons and the Creels.

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10
The allusion has not been precisely identified. A
“stink-pot” was either a weapon designed to
release acrid vapors when burned, or a device similarly used to combat
cholera by fumigation. Both devices might have been used in the siege of
Sevastopol (October 1854–September 1855) in the Crimean War,
but no specific reference has been found to either in the voluminous
contemporary reports of that battle. “Ete” was
Esther Taylor.

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11
Escorted by the Keokuk Guards and welcomed by a booming cannon and
exultant speeches by the city fathers, Keokuk’s first steam
locomotive, the J. K. Hornish, arrived at the
levee at 9:00 A.M. on 8 August, via barge from Quincy, Illinois. The Hornish was intended for the Keokuk, Mount
Pleasant, and Muscatine Railroad. It was named for the
company’s general agent, who had been instrumental in
obtaining construction financing for the line. By reducing the cost of
transporting freight around the Keokuk rapids from two dollars to fifty
cents per ton, the railroad greatly benefited the town’s
economy (“Steam Engine J. K. Hornish,” Keokuk Post, 9 Aug 56, 3; “Hurrah for the
Iron Horse!” Keokuk Saturday Post, 9
Aug 56, 2; “The Locomotive . . . ,” Keokuk Gate City, 9 Aug 56, 3; History
of Lee County, 510–11).

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12
Mollie Clemens’s nineteen-year-old sister, Susan Isabella
(Belle) Stotts (b. 1837), was a soloist with Keokuk’s
Mendelssohn Choral Society, as was its director, Oliver Isbell
(“Concert. The Mendelssohn Choral Society,” Keokuk
Gate City, 13 Mar 56, 2). The rumor of an
attachment between the two apparently was persistent, for in a letter of
28 May 1858, Orion Clemens asked his wife, “What made Mrs.
Isbell jealous of Belle? What did Isbell do to make Pa
[Mollie’s father, William Stotts] so
angry?” (CU-MARK). Belle married Thomas B. Bohon on 1
October 1861.

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13
Richard Higham’s new employer was James B. Howell, one of
Orion’s competitors. Howell and Company edited and published
two Whig newspapers in Keokuk, the daily Gate
City and the weekly Des Moines Valley Whig
(OC 1856, 76; OC 1857, 38, 121; Harris, 324).